Usability Forum

Posts tagged with "taxes"

Nothing wrong with being prepared....Legacy Locker

By Eddie Lopez. Wednesday, 15. April 2009, 14:21:59

digital will, prepared, taxes, death ...

Update- CNN article

As I'm getting married in a matter of months, my fiancee and I were discussing the increasingly more relevant* conversation of "what about our online accounts in the event of our untimely demise?" (we're very romantic)

Answer: "Legacy Locker" is a pretty good solution (assuming you're a trusting fellow). Particularly when they reminded just how far my digital reach is...

Do you have an email account? Or two? Or three? Do you buy or sell stuff with eBay, Amazon, PayPal, Yahoo! Stores, or elsewhere? Do you blog, or use Twitter, or put up videos on YouTube? Do you share or backup photos with Flickr, Photobucket, Snapfish, Kodak Gallery, or Shutterfly? Do you maintain your identity at LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, or Plaxo? Do you have credits in the iTunes store, or at PartyPoker.com?

Yes! Yes I do! ...and I'm sure my fiancee couldn't keep up with all those passwords if I had just shared them. It's pretty obvious that you share a banking account password or something, but consider all the above that you'd prefer not just lost in the big bit-bucket in the sky (my son is Eddie Jr, and I have a lot of domain names and email addresses I'm sure he'll appreciate in time) I had thought in the past with updating my will with username and password info, but there's no way I would be able to keep it current & updated. Their FAQ addresses this and most of the "why shouldn't I just..." questions I had.

Security is the biggest concern of course, I would be wary about putting my entire digital life in some other company's hands, so I'd like something that still captures the simplicity of updating the system, but keeps the desire to hack Legacy Locker's servers and/or have a rogue employee run off with my data to a minimum. Maybe a local client that encrypts my information before upload and generates a key that I can have put in a will or otherwise make easily accessible to my beneficiaries.

Anyway, I know it's not the most jovial post ever, but it certainly is a neat idea. Be prepared!

*Increasingly relevant because I'm opening more and more accounts as I get older- not because I'm getting closer to needing this service. Well, I guess technically I am, but...come on man!.. you got me thinking about it. Thanks.

2 comments

Turbo Tax Online is not the bastion of usability

By Eddie. Tuesday, 14. February 2006, 05:38:37

taxes, usability, turbo tax

Last year, I used desktop turbo tax and found it to be the best thing in usability since that little plastic thing that keeps the top of the pizza box from crushing the cheesy goodness beneath it.

This year, I upped the ante a bit... and tried TT online. My taxes are a bit more complicated this year, I admit (although not much more), but there are no excuses for the strange instructions and lack of help I've found here. Nothing is worse than a help/search that can't help you or find what you're looking for. Trust is lost and you're less apt to use these tools.

A few examples of my frustrations....
Federal:
- I'm trying to figure out some moving expenses stuff... and I get this error message:

...this looks pretty cool. Except, as far as I can tell, there's no progress bar nor is there an "easy step navagator" [sic]. I have no idea what to do with this. As far as I can tell from the top and side navigation bars (not included here..sorry) I can't find a progress bar, or an easy step navigator. What is this all about?

State Taxes:
-As far as I know- there's not way to edit a single portion of my state taxes without walking step by step through every single section, GREATLY increasing the odds I'll change an option I don't intend to. In the federal portion, you can choose an "area" to step into and edit. This appears to not be the case in the state.

-See the screenshot from two posts ago. I still don't know where to put my rental information. I clicked the appropriately labeled "Where do I enter?" button and get taken back to my federal return to start entering information about my rental properties.

**Update. After walking through the W-2 portion again- I fixed the above error. But what was most frustrating about it (and worthy of an update) was that when I went to "link the city I moved too" it was already filled out! TT already had some link between the moving expenses and the city. It it just wanted a confirmation, why not present that to me at the time the above screenshot is shown?

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